Identity and Experience_Hamilton_1996

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Identity and Experience
bhikkhus might have spread topics which it was not strictly their duty to
preserve. So there was much opportunity for variations to be included in
the material. Though the Pali canon as compiled from all its different
sources was written down in approximately 25 BCE, scholars accept that
even after that date changes are likely to have taken place.'* This process of
preservation applies to the Vinaya, in which the bhiWd2u.s' code of discipline is
recorded, and the Sutta Pitaka, which contains the doctrinal teachings. The
Abhidhamma Pi!nka is a later scholastic compilation which deals systematically
and minutely with a wide range of issues in the Buddha's teachings. It
aims to give definitive views on points which might not have been clear in
the earlier material. '"
My study of the Sutta PzPztakd was undertaken with the initial view that
where various interpretations of apparently inconsistent passages are
equally possible, it would be faulty methodology not to attribute to the texts
the strongest interpretation, that is the most coherent and intellectually
powerful one, given their common doctrinal background. In view of the
way the canonical material was compiled, I nevertheless had little or no
expectation of finding a coherent understanding of the human being and
anticipated that a large part of this work would consist in relating its
inconsistencies. But I found that in the main the inconsistencies lie in
relatively minor matters such as the use of terms. In many instances a term
is used in different contexts with different meanings. Sometimes the
difference in meaning is only subtle and not easy to detect, and sometimes
there is a wide variation in meaning. In his History oflndian Philosophy,
Dasgupta makes the following comment on the fact that terms are used
with different meanings in different contexts:
The Buddha was one of the first few earliest thinkers to introduce proper
philosophical terms and phraseology with a distinct philosophical method
and he had often to use the same word in more or less different senses. Some
of the philosophical terms at least are therefore somewhat elastic . . .20
In discussing this point, I. B. Horner has suggested that this indicates a
certain insufficiency of terms rather than an unsettled state of philosophical
and psychoIogical terminology by the time the Nikoas came into being.21
But philosophy and psychology were in a far from settled state at the time
of the Buddha's teaching. The philosophical enquiry in the Brahmanical
religion, as recorded in the Brihmanas and the early Upanijads, was a
relatively recent phenomenon, seen as merely supplementary to the
ritualistic sacrificial system. The development took place gradually, and
this is reflected in the early Upani~adr which were perhaps extant at the time
of the Buddha. In them we find both the ritual of the Edas and the
speculative beginnings of a psychology based upon the new idea of
salvation as a special kind of knowledge. The systematic use of philosophical
and psychological terminology is far from established, and terms are